Development of an artificial intelligence-based algorithm for predicting the severity of myxomatous mitral valve disease from thoracic radiographs by using two grading systems.

Journal: Research in veterinary science
PMID:

Abstract

A heart-convolutional neural network (heart-CNN) was designed and tested for the automatic classification of chest radiographs in dogs affected by myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) at different stages of disease severity. A retrospective and multicenter study was conducted. Lateral radiographs of dogs with concomitant X-ray and echocardiographic examination were selected from the internal databases of two institutions. Dogs were classified as healthy, B1, B2, C and D, based on American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) guidelines, and as healthy, mild, moderate, severe and late stage, based on Mitral INsufficiency Echocardiographic (MINE) score. Heart-CNN performance was evaluated using confusion matrices, receiver operating characteristic curves, and t-SNE and UMAP analysis. The area under the curve (AUC) was 0.88, 0.88, 0.79, 0.89 and 0.84 for healthy and ACVIM stage B1, B2, C and D, respectively. According to the MINE score, the AUC was 0.90, 0.86, 0.71, 0.82 and 0.82 for healthy, mild, moderate, severe and late stage, respectively. The developed algorithm showed good accuracy in predicting MMVD stages based on both classification systems, proving a potentially useful tool in the early diagnosis of canine MMVD.

Authors

  • Carlotta Valente
    Department of Animal Medicine, Production and Health, University of Padua, Viale dell'Università 16, 35020, Legnaro, Padua, Italy. Electronic address: carlotta.valente@unipd.it.
  • Marek Wodzinski
  • Carlo Guglielmini
    Department of Animal Medicine, Production and Health, University of Padua, Viale dell'Università 16, 35020, Legnaro, Padua, Italy.
  • Helen Poser
    Department of Animal Medicine, Production and Health, University of Padua, Viale dell'Università 16, 35020, Legnaro, Padua, Italy.
  • David Chiavegato
    AniCura Arcella Veterinary Clinic, Via Cardinale Callegari 48, 35133 Padua, Italy.
  • Alessandro Zotti
    Department of Animal Medicine, Production and Health, University of Padua, Viale dell'Università 16, AGRIPOLIS, Legnaro, 35020, Padua, Italy. alessandro.zotti@unipd.it.
  • Roberto Venturini
    AniCura Arcella Veterinary Clinic, Via Cardinale Callegari 48, 35133 Padua, Italy.
  • Tommaso Banzato
    Department of Animal Medicine, Production and Health, University of Padua, Viale dell'Università 16, AGRIPOLIS, Legnaro, 35020, Padua, Italy.